Meningitis outbreak illustrates absent oversight in drug production

Recall includes 17,000+ vials of a steroid from the New England Compounding Center

The rising toll — 7 dead, 57 ill and thousands potentially exposed — has cast a harsh light on the loose regulations that legal experts say allowed a company to sell 17,676 vials of an unsafe drug to pain clinics in 23 states. Federal health officials said Friday that all patients injected with the steroid drug made by that company, the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass., which has a troubled history, needed to be tracked down immediately and informed of the danger.

“This wasn’t some obscure procedure being done in some obscure hospital,” said Tom Carroll, a close friend to the Lovelace family, and their lawyer. “They had sought out a respected neurosurgeon who had been referred by their family doctor, at a respected hospital,” he said, referring to the St. Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgery Center. “How does this happen?”

The answer, at least in part, is that some doctors and clinics have turned away from major drug manufacturers and have taken their business to so-called compounding pharmacies, like New England Compounding, which mix up batches of drugs on their own, often for much lower prices than major manufacturers charge — and with little of the federal oversight of drug safety and quality that is routine for the big companies.

“The Food and Drug Administration has more regulatory authority over a drug factory in China than over a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts,” said Kevin Outterson, an associate professor of law at Boston University…

In recent years, compounding pharmacies have sometimes filled gaps left by shortages of drugs made by pharmaceutical companies.

“As drug shortages have become more complex and common, pharmacies are turning to external compounding companies to help them,” said Cynthia Reilly, of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, referring to hospital pharmacies…

There certainly is need for production of generic alternatives of some of the more specialized drugs produced by these hospital pharmacies. The article notes a product from one pharmaceutical company that had the price increased 100 x previous charge – after it was approved by the FDA. Another definition of “care” in our current healthcare system.